1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is cabling systems.
2. Background Information
Recent attention has been directed to improving bicycles and devices and systems used on bicycles for purposes of "trick" riding. Trick riding involves performing stunts, unusual, difficult, and sometimes dangerous maneuvers on bicycles. A trick commonly performed involves spinning the bicycle handlebars while keeping the front wheel of the bicycle off the ground. Many trick bicycles, however, employ a hand brake system for the rear wheels. The hand brake is located on the handlebars and is cabled to a brake shoe system on the rear wheel.
Obviously, a cable connected directly from the handlebars to the rear wheel brake system would become tangled after a relatively small number of turns of the handlebars. To alleviate this tangling, cable detangler systems were developed. One such cable detangler system is manufactured by Scura Speed & Technology, 23011 Alcalde Drive, Building A. Laguna Hills, Calif. 92653 detangler systems sometimes include a bearing mechanism which decouples the cable attached to the hand brake from the cable, or cables, attached to the brake shoes. In this system, the single cable from the brake lever on the handle bars is split to two upper cables which are attached to either side of the upper unit in the bearing assembly. Two lower cables are in turn attached to the bottom unit of the bearing assembly, and those two cables are then reduced to a single cable which runs to the rear brake shoe assembly. As the handlebar brake lever is activated, the upper cables pull the upper unit upward, thus pulling on the lower unit, which in turn pulls on the two lower cables, causing the brake shoe assembly to actuate. Through the use of such a cable detangler, the handle bars may be rotated indefinitely without any cable tangling.
Some cable detanglers, however, suffer from various drawbacks. To assure proper fit of the bearing mechanism, the cables included in the cable detangler should desirably be manufactured to precise tolerances and the cable detangler should be installed with a high degree of precision. Due to limitations in the ability to manufacture cables to extremely precise tolerances, design flaws, and less than perfect installation techniques employed by relatively unsophisticated users, undesirable results in the use of cable detanglers sometimes result. Due partially to differences in cable lengths leading either to the bearing mechanism or the cable detangler, the bearing mechanism sometimes wobbles, or "flops", particularly when the handlebars are spun during a trick ride. This flopping impairs the spinning of the handlebars. This "flop" is a well-recognized problem in the industry.
Means of attempting to remedy these cable detangler problems include a modified cable splitter in which one cable is connected to a "floating" bar by one or more set screws within the splitter frame, such that the bar would be capable of a small amount of travel parallel to the cables. Extending away from the bar in a direction opposite the cable are two other cables also connected to the bar by set screws. This modified splitter provided some improvement, but the "floating" bar was not designed to pivot to compensate for differences in the lengths of cable detangler cables, and still did not provide for movement of the lower cables relative to one another. Thus, the "flop" was not fully eliminated. Moreover, these cables connected by set screws sometimes become frayed and worn by contact with the set screws. The cables may become loose and require precise readjustment, or replacement. These cable splitters also often require the use of special tools, including small allen wrenches, that some users and mechanics do not have.
Therefore, a need was perceived for a cable splitter that would substantially eliminate the "flop", would not become quickly worn or frayed and would not require periodic readjustment.